'To Read and to Question': Gender, Race, and African American Women in the USSR, 1930s

• In Event: Poets, Soldiers, Doctors, and Travellers: Intersectional Experiences of Women in Modern Eastern Europe

Abstract

After the Russian Revolution, Soviet women experienced an expansion of their rights where they could vote and were provided social support and programs to emancipate them from the roles of housewife and mother. In their travels to the Soviet Union, Black women witnessed these changes firsthand and hoped to bring these ideas back to the United States, but as time passed the Communist Party in the Soviet Union shifted away from promoting women's rights, claiming party members should concern themselves with class instead of gender. This paper analyzes the intersections of race and gender through African Americans journeys to the Soviet Union to explore how and if women's rights impacted African American women's experiences and ideas about the Soviet Russia during the 1920s-1930s.

Author

• Madeleine Stout, Florida State U